The Spectacle of History: Speech, Text, and Memory at the Iran-Contra Hearings (Post-Contemporary Interventions) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822317389 ISBN 13: 9780822317388

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 1996

Synopsis

How is history produced? How do individuals write—or rewrite—their parts while engaged in the production of history? Michael Lynch and David Bogen take the example of the Iran-contra hearings to explore these questions. These hearings, held in 1987 by the Joint House-Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaragua Opposition, provided the nation with a media spectacle and a rare chance to see a struggle over the writing of history. There was Oliver North, prime suspect and designated scapegoat, turning into a hero of the American Right before the very eyes of the nation. How this transformation occurred, with the complicity of the press and the public, becomes disturbingly clear in The Spectacle of History.
Lynch and Bogen detail the practices through which the historical agents at the center of the hearings composed, confirmed, used, erased, and denied the historical record. They show how partisan skirmishes over the disclosure of records and testimony led to a divided and irresolute outcome, an outcome further facilitated by the “applied deconstruction” deployed by North and his allies. The Spectacle of History immerses the reader in a crowded field of texts, utterances, visual displays, and media commentaries, but, more than a case study, it develops unique insight into problems at the heart of society and social theory—lying and credibility, the production of civic spectacle, the relationship between testimony and history, the uses of memory, and the interplay between speech and writing.
Drawing on themes from sociology, literary theory, and ethnomethodology and challenging prevailing concepts held by contemporary communication and cultural studies, Lynch and Bogen extract valuable theoretical lessons from this specific and troubling historical episode.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

It is a well-known feature of historical inquiries that an event can be reconstructed in countless ways. Chronologies can begin earlier or later and can be fleshed out with variable amounts of detail; characters can be added or elided; agency and blame can be assigned to different parties.

About the Author:

Michael Lynch is Professor in the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University, Middlesex.

David Bogen is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Emerson College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0822317389
• ISBN 13: 9780822317388
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Lynch Michael E., Bogen David